My friends are not old, its just that I have had the privilege of knowing them awhile. It was a great afternoon in the city by the bay and I met up first with an ex-colleague of mine from my conusltant days. He was in town to shake the tree and sell his company's consulting services to possible clients.
He is good at it. The lunch appointment we had was for noon. He was on the phone all morning before he could make it down to meet. When he did appear he was nicely dressed up. It took me a moment to connect that it was him, because I was not sure if he dressed up for phone conferences or if he had put on a suit to meet me. I assumed it was the latter to flatter myself. Also he had glasses on. I had always seen him deglassed or unglassed during my time knowing him. I guess he did age after all.
We ate Sushi at a neighborhood Japanese restaurant that was surprisingly not too crowded considering the humanity that had descended for the conference in town. We reminisced of our time together and what we were up to with our respective lives and wives and other attachments.
It was fascinating to hear about what he was up to being successful at work and managing a family visting relatives etc. We did not have a whole lot of time together but it was definitely refreshing to get caught up on a decade of living our separate lives.
Next I met with another of my friends whom I befriended through consulting work I did in my past life. He too lives a very packed schedule with family and had flown in from the midwest to attend the same technology conference that my other friend had.
To me it was many friends in one visit type of arrangement. We had met few times since we worked together and not quite the gap as with the other friend who I had not seen close to 10 years. Still the pleasure of connecting in person beat the phone conversation or the electronic exchange over the data cloud using email etc.
I have promised my friends to send some pictures of my recent travels and might perhaps burden them with an invite to check out my blog. What are friends for after all eh?
Today's world is hyper connected. I am not so sure what it means but you hear it a lot. It is probably hyper but not sure how connected it is. Sugar (fermented or not) is available in many ways than before and so getting hyper is easy. It is probably more a threat than cocaine since it is sold legally. And what is this connected stuff? Most people I encounter seem disconnected from reality. So going back to this assumption that we are connected there are subtle and no so subtle instances of how brands and companies and middle men try to portray someone - A linkedin profile for somebody working for X years at a place advertises to the connected network that so and so is CELEBRATING X years @ Such and Such Inc. Do we know if (s)he is celebrating or cringing? Perhaps a better way to portray will be - So and So LASTED X years @ such & such inc. Then it exhorts the readership to go ahead and congratulate them for this lasting effe...
Yes, blog reading (and appreciating is a necessary qualification for one..
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